Chapter 51: The Soul in the Body, G‑d in the World

To clarify further the Yenuka’s words cited earlier (chapter 35), we first need some understanding of what it means that the Shechinah rested in the Holy of Holies, and wherever else the Shechinah is said to rest. What can this mean, when Scripture says, “The whole world is filled with His glory” (Yeshayahu 6), and the Tikkunei Zohar says, “No place is devoid of Him”?

The answer follows the verse “From my own flesh I behold G‑d” (Iyov 19:26). A person’s soul pervades all 248 limbs of the body, from head to toe; yet its chief seat and residence is the brain, and from there it branches out into every limb. Each limb draws from it the vitality and capacity fitting for it, in keeping with its structure and character: the eye gains sight, the ear hearing, the mouth speech, the legs walking. This is plain to see, since a person senses in the brain all that goes on in the 248 limbs and all that they undergo.

Now, the variety of powers and vitality that the limbs draw from the soul does not stem from any division in the soul’s own essence, as though it were split into 248 separate pieces, each lodged in a different spot matching the form and location of a limb. Were that so, the soul’s essence would itself have a bodily form, a shape and image like the body’s, G‑d forbid. Instead, the entire soul is a single spiritual entity, simple, free of any bodily shape and of any notion of location, dimension or physical boundary, in its very essence. One cannot say, then, that its essence is present in the brain more than in the legs, for its essence lies outside the category of location and physical boundary. Rather, within its essence are included 613 kinds of powers and vitality, which emerge from concealment into activity and disclosure to animate the 248 limbs and 365 blood vessels of the body. They do this by becoming vested in the nefesh hachiyunis (the soul that animates the body), which likewise possesses these 248 and 365 powers and vitality.

Regarding the flow of all 613 kinds of powers and vitality out of the soul’s concealment into the body to animate it, it was said that the chief seat and residence of this flow and disclosure is wholly in the brain. For that reason the brain is first to receive its own fitting power and vitality, according to its structure and character: chochmah, binah and daas (wisdom, understanding and knowledge), the faculty of thought, and everything that pertains to the mind. Beyond this, the sum total of all the vitality destined for the remaining limbs is also gathered and vested in the brain. That is the principal source of the flow, where the entire soul’s light and life come into the open. From there a radiance goes out to each of the other limbs, and every one takes the power and vitality fitting for it, according to its structure and character: the eye discloses the faculty of sight, the ear the faculty of hearing, and likewise the rest. Every faculty radiates outward from the brain, as is known. So the brain is the chief residence of the whole soul in its disclosed form, since the totality of the vitality that flows from it is disclosed there, and only rays of that total vitality shine out from it to all the body’s limbs, like the sunlight that streams into the inner chambers of a house. (The heart, too, is nourished by the brain; hence the mind rules it by nature, as noted earlier.)

Exactly so, by way of analogy, does the Ein Sof, blessed be He, fill all the worlds and animate them. Every world holds countless, boundless creatures: endless myriads of kinds and ranks of angels, souls and the like. The worlds themselves, too, are beyond number or measure, each above the next, and so forth.

Yet the essence of the Ein Sof, blessed be He, is identical in the upper worlds and the lower ones, just like the soul in the analogy above. The Tikkunim (Tikkunei Zohar, Introduction) say: “Concealed beyond all that is concealed.” That is to say, even within the concealed upper worlds He remains veiled and hidden, exactly as He is veiled and hidden within the lower ones; for “no thought can grasp Him whatsoever,” not even in the loftiest worlds. Consequently, as He is present there, so is He present in the lowest of places.

Where upper and lower worlds differ is in the vitality the Ein Sof, blessed be He, sends down and radiates out of concealment into disclosure (which is one reason the flow of vitality is termed “light”, as an analogy) in order to animate the worlds and their creatures. The upper worlds take it in a form somewhat more disclosed than the lower worlds do, and each of their creatures takes it in according to its own capacity and character, that character being shaped by the particular flow the Ein Sof, blessed be He, sends down and radiates to it.

The lower worlds, spiritual ones included, do not take it in so openly. They receive it only through numerous garments, in which the Ein Sof, blessed be He, wraps the vitality and light He sends down and radiates to animate them.

So many and so strong are the garments in which the Ein Sof, blessed be He, clothes and hides the light and life, that with it He created this truly physical and material world. He brings it into being and gives it life with the life and light that He draws down and shines to it, a light clothed, covered and hidden within the many and mighty garments that conceal and hide the light and life, until no light or life at all is seen or revealed, only physical, material things that look dead. But within them there is light and life that constantly creates them from nothing into being, so that they do not go back to being nothing and nought, as they were. And this light comes from the Ein Sof, blessed be He, except that it is wrapped in numerous garments. Etz Chaim teaches that the light and life of the physical globe of the earth, seen by human eyes, comes from malchus of malchus of Asiyah, and within it is malchus of Yetzirah, and so on, until within all of them are the ten sefiros of Atzilus, which are one with their Emanator, the Ein Sof, blessed be He.